


Someday

by bananasandroses (achuislemochroi)



Series: Whofic [46]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 2X13 (Doomsday), Angst, F/M, Tenth Doctor Era, writerinatardis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 05:56:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1594079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achuislemochroi/pseuds/bananasandroses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He always <i>knew</i> he’d lose her, someday.  And now he has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Someday

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Round 2.04 in [](http://writerinatardis.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://writerinatardis.livejournal.com/)**writerinatardis**

The last thing of which he’d thought himself capable was being nostalgic about something so disgustingly domestic as a woman’s make-up. He’d been able to notice within seconds when Rose, bored with a lipstick or an eyeshadow, had changed to something new, but any inclination to continue had been lost with her. He told himself that he had no clue about make-up where women were concerned, and that he couldn’t care less who was wearing what.

He was lying to himself, and he knew it.

But it hurt to remember. Hurt almost as much as it did to remember Gallifrey, and that _hurt_ ; more than anything. But remembering it, no matter how much it hurt him, kept the memory of it alive in his hearts and meant that although everything was dead – his family, his friends, the silver leaves on the trees that became a forest of flame in the sunrise every morning – it was nevertheless not quite gone. Yet to remember it meant remembering the family he’d found to replace the one he’d lost ...

They’d all gone now. But he’d been more attuned to Rose than he’d been to any other being in centuries, and in so doing she had proved the exception to so many of his axioms and standards, and domesticity had been one of the very first barriers to fall. He’d been so desperate to keep her, for her not to run back to her old life and abandon him, that he’d somehow not seen what was bound to happen if he gave in. He’d end up doing it again and again, never able to hold anything of himself back because he was terrified that if he did she’d want nothing more to do with him.

Rationally he knew that behaving like this was asking for trouble, but by that time he was in so deep he didn’t have a clue how to stop. Time went on, and like peeling the layers from an onion he found the barriers between them slipping more and more. He gave her more and more of himself, confident that she would never use her knowledge against him, and in doing so learned to trust another person more than he had been able to trust anybody in years.

It was a liberating feeling, utterly addictive, and suddenly he found himself dreaming of living a life, day after day, with his pink-and-yellow miracle – forcing himself only to see the bright side of things, refusing to acknowledge the reality of what was _bound_ to happen someday. Every day the dream grew, building in his mind, until he could almost touch and taste it. He felt like an alchemist turning base metal into gold, and never looked further than the day that was in it.

And every day that passed – and the days they passed so quickly, then – he’d let her intertwine herself with him until he could not bear to think of what his life would be without her.

Soon enough he found her utterly necessary to him on more levels than he cared to admit; found that she meant more to him than he’d ever had a hope of being able to verbalise. For all his babble he did whatever he had to to distract people from becoming _too_ close; he never was quite sure whether she’d figured that out but he always did believe her smarter and more capable than anybody gave her credit for being. She reminded him of Ace a little in that way.

Shortly before disaster fell upon them he’d finally let the last barrier fall; the two of them were so close to each other on every wavelength at that point that Jackie had laughed at them in outright disbelief that they weren’t already lovers and nothing they could say could persuade her she was wrong. He thinks the fact that she didn’t seem either angry or surprised might well have been what swung his mind into making the lie a truth a few hours later when he and Rose were alone in the TARDIS and Jackie had gone to bed.

He’d encouraged her to move in to his room properly after that, and he’d gone so far as to help her do it, finding places for all the female fripperies she brought with her. A tube of whatever that stuff was she put on her eyelashes had disappeared shortly afterwards and he’d told her to leave it, that he’d get her some more when they went back home after visiting Jackie again. Rose had the bezoolium they’d bought in some goblin market or other, and he was almost keen to see London again.

And then catastrophe was on them, and Rose never did get her new mascara.

He found it, some months after Martha had moved in down the hall. It had fallen and become wedged between the dressing table and the wall and some sudden movement had dislodged it; it brought to painful life the memory of the girl he loved so deeply and missed so very much, and the pain was proof to him that whatever else happened he would never, ever forget her.

For the last thing of which he’d thought himself capable was being nostalgic about something so disgustingly domestic as a woman’s make-up.

But then, it was Rose. And for her, things would _always_ be different.

  



End file.
